


Young, Dumb and Full of... You know 😉... Questions.

by Zenolalia



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ace Panic, Asexual Character, Comedy, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Eden Spoilers, Female-Centric, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Genderqueer Character, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Incest, Multi, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Podfic Welcome, Questioning, Questioning Sexuality, Ryne-Centric, Straight People Are Ghosts, Straight People Are Not Real, Trans Character, Translation Welcome, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-10 13:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20136391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zenolalia/pseuds/Zenolalia
Summary: It started out with a kiss... How did it end up like this?! It was only a kiss! It was only a kiss!!!!!-*-Presented with Alisaie's tales of Studium hijinks, Ryne concludes that she might not be growing up at the correct speed. Lifelong imprisonment in a war state will do that! Unfortunately, kissing doesn't seem to achieve anything useful, so she and her twin assistants set out to determine what's going on with her, and relatedly, if the myth of "Straight People" has any factual basis in real life.





	1. Alisaie's Patented Make Out Techniques Reach Their Limits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArionWind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArionWind/gifts).

> The background ships featured in this piece include Alphinaud/Alisaie, Alphinaud/Estinien, Krile/Minfilia, Y'shtola/Runar, Y'shtola/The Entire Slitherbough Commune, Thancred/Paralytic Self Doubt, Urianger/Tea, and Ryne/The Oracle of Darkness. At one point Ryne concludes that Urianger and Thancred are together. This is a conclusion I support, but which is not further substantiated.

Lightly steaming and free of stray twigs, Alphinaud stumbled from the baths to his Pendants apartment. With the return of a consistent day/night cycle, there had also come the return of regular expectations for when he could and couldn’t sleep for 15 straight bells. Couldn’t was a lot more frequent.

He was tired enough to barely notice Ryne was over, babbling frantically about something no doubt extremely important while Alisaie nodded along and ate one of the seemingly omnipresent sandwiches so popular in the Crystarium. If his woe-begotten sisters wanted to have a sleepover, that was their business. He was going to _sleep_.

“I don’t know, Ryne, I thought it would work. It always works on Alphinaud, and he’s… Well, he’s not the worst, obviously, but he’s definitely at least as bad about it as Urianger.”

“But then, what does it mean for me!” Ryne squeaked. Whining was unbecoming of the Oracle of Light. If she weren’t possessed of supernal abilities, it would have been whining. But she was, so it was squeaking.

Alisaie combined a shrug and a bite of sandwich inelegantly. “I guess it means you’re even worse?” 

Ryne squeaked again, wordlessly this time. Silence crept into the space left behind by her mounting horror. 

Alphinaud collapsed face first on his bed. For a moment, he even thought the silence would last long enough to let him pass out. 

Alisaie threw a slice of tomato at him. It missed.

She threw a leaf of lettuce, which, being unaerodynamic, made it roughly two feet before slapping onto the ground.

“Um, Alphinaud,” Ryne ventured.

Alphinaud continued breathing deeply into the comforter. Ryne was a good, sweet, innocent girl who could be trusted to give up after one attempt.

Alisaie threw an entire sandwich at Alphinaud. Most of it splattered moistly on the ground, but a thin slice of indeterminate meat—or cheese?–stuck, wet and deeply, deeply not-bathed, to the back of his neck.

“Perfect shot!” Alisaie yelled, which did more to make Alphinaud flinch back to verticality. The meat schlopped onto the blanket.

“Sorry, Alphinaud,” Ryne offered. The apology was muffled by the hands pressing the laughter back behind her lips.

“I’m not!” Alisaie added, her boots thudding across the stone floor. “We’re having a crisis, Alphinaud, pay attention!”

“I don’t think it’s necessarily to the point of a crisis yet?” Ryne said.

“It’s absolutely a crisis.” Alisaie flopped into the space Alphinaud’s torso had recently vacated, and slung her legs over Alphinaud’s lap. “And you know what they say about crises!”

“I neither know nor have any desire to find out,” Alphinaud tried to cut his twin off.

This failed.

“If you can’t stab it, smother it with Alphinaud’s lectures.” Both girls recited. Ryne had the decency to look sorry.

“That is neither a real colloquialism nor an accurate assessment of any crisis situation.”

“It is this time,” Alisaie insisted. Her knee threatened to crush his diaphragm if he disagreed. “Ryne’s like 16. You remember 16 right?” Alisaie’s tone clearly indicated that she was referring to a specific aspect of being 16 which Alphinaud had tried very hard to forget. She wiggled her thighs across his own emphatically. “Only, she’s not... Well, you know. She's just not!"  


Alphinaud stared at Ryne as if her face would somehow explain the context of Alisaie’s concerns. He refused to consider that Alisaie would be dragging him into the sexual awakening of their newly acquired little sister. Thus, there was another explanation. He just had to find it. 

Ryne blushed enough to blotch. That was not a good sign for Alphinaud. It also clashed spectacularly with her hair. “It’s just, we tried kissing but it didn’t… work? I don’t know what it was supposed to do but-” 

“I know, and it definitely didn’t.” Alisaie finished. 

"Well of course it didn't, coming from you!" Alphinaud declared with all the unearned authority of a valedictorian who had made out with Alisaie exactly twice.

Ryne's confused noise was swallowed wholecloth by Alisaie's insulted yowl. "Excuse me? Who in this room drove you to ruin your pants in the middle of the quad with a single kiss by the time she was fourteen!"

Alphinaud, sensibly, lurched back from Alisaie's anger before she could summon a blade, hands up in a universal posture of, 'please don't kill me yet, I can explain.' It took exceptional abdominal strength not to fall completely backwards.

"Not because you're bad at it! Just, what if Ryne's..." He trailed off, dubiously.

"What if I'm?" Ryne prompted.

"What if Ryne's what!?" Alisaie demanded.

"Straight?" Alphinaud asked, as if he weren't the one making the suggestion.

For a moment, the twins' apartment was deathly silent. No sleep threatened to encroach this time.

Ryne cleared her throat, head cocked curiously to one side. "What's 'straight?'"

"It's a fucking myth, that's what!" Alisaie blurted.

"Alisaie!" Alphinaud replied, barely resisting the urge to cover Ryne's ears.

"What! It's a myth about fucking! Everyone knows straight people aren't real, Alphinaud."

Alphinaud elected to ignore that absurd claim, focusing on Ryne, who appeared caught between the urge to laugh at his scandalized look, and the urge to stomp between the twins and demand an actual explanation.

"Straight," he said in his most unrepentant lecturing tone, "is when a woman is only interested in relations with men, rather than other women."

"See?" Alisaie said. "A myth!"

Ryne nodded as sagely as it was possible for a confused 16 year old girl to nod. Given the Minfilia situation, this was a surprising depth of sageliness. "It does sound very fake, Alphinaud."

“No, no,” Alphinaud continued, undaunted. There was a lecture to be had here. “You can ask Thancred, he was straight for a while. Also, I think maybe Minfilia,” he waved in the generally opposite direction of Ryne, “the first one, I mean, was straight too? I’ve definitely met straight people. They’re very real.”

Alisaie propped herself up on her elbows for the singular purpose of shaking her head as emphatically as possible. “No, no, Minfilia and Krile were sleeping together for years before we came to Eorzea. You really didn’t notice?”

Alphinaud made a valiant effort not to cringe at a number of factors about that claim. “Okay, not Minfilia, but please. Please never discuss Krile’s sexual endeavours again.”

Ryne chose that moment to chime in, “Is having sex with Krile worse than having sex with Alisaie, then?” The Source’s concerns about sex and sexuality were endlessly confusing.

Alisaie laughed so hard her arms failed, collapsing back onto the mattress. Alphinaud tried to bury himself in the comforter. This, too, failed.

“Yes, it’s much worse!” He wailed.

“No, no, it’s definitely better.” Alisaie, corrected between giggles. “Ignore him, he’s lying.”

Ryne folded forward over the table, squinting at the pile of twins. “I thought Krile was also your sister, though?”

“Oh, by the twelve, Thancred is going to skin us alive.” Alphinaud muttered mostly to the ceiling and partly to whatever facet of Hydaelyn would take pity on him.

“Krile’s not actually our sister,” Alisaie managed, “but also you’re not actually supposed to fuck your sisters.”

Ryne perked up immediately. “Does that apply to kissing, too? Is that why it didn’t work?”

“I think it’s the straight thing, I really do,” Alphinaud informed the ceiling. Neither it nor Alisaie acknowledged him.

“No, no,” Alisaie waved Ryne's concern away. “I’m very good at kissing. I would have won out over an incest taboo, and Ryne, you don’t even have an incest taboo.”

“Maybe it’s the straight thing?” Ryne asked.

“It’s not the straight thing.” Alisaie said.

“It’s definitely the straight thing.” Alphinaud said.

“Oh for heavens’ sakes, Alphinaud, if you think it’s the straight thing so much, then why don’t you kiss Ryne and see if that fixes it!”

“Would that work?” Ryne asked.

“It would not work,” Alphinaud said.

“It would definitely work,” Alisaie said.

Ryne giggled helplessly at the matched set before her. “Well, can we try it?”

Alisaie finally freed her twin from the pinning weight of her legs, and kneed him off the bed for good measure. “We can definitely try it,” she declared.

Ryne waited politely for Alphinaud’s matched reply, which did not come.

Alisaie kicked the back of his head lightly for even better measure.

“Fine! We can try it, but if Thancred comes for us, I’m letting him kill you first!”

Ryne clapped twice and scurried over to help Alphinaud up from the floor.

Staring down at her, Alphinaud was reminded of two things. First, he had never actually been taller than Alisaie, and second, he had never been taller than anyone but Lalafell. And Ryne.

Ryne grinned up at him. She wiggled very slightly, too pleased by the possibilities before her to actually hold still.

Just as Alisaie had done—which made sense, given Alisaie had been the one to come up with the technique—Alphinaud splayed his fingers along her jaw, bracketing each of her ears, thumbs set on her cheeks. His hands were just as warm, though significantly softer. Ryne tried to decide if that made a difference, and if it did, whether the difference was good.

Alphinaud pressed their lips together, gently. This, too, was much softer than Alisaie had been. The difference didn’t seem especially relevant. Still, just to be sure, Ryne copied the movements Alisaie had shown her that morning, mouth sliding open and suctioning his lower lip between her teeth.

No, it really didn’t matter at all. It just wasn’t working.

Pulling back, and studying the consternation on Ryne’s face, Alphinaud had to agree. This was clearly doing nothing for her. He elected to deal with his own, personal conclusions, primarily regarding incest taboos, later. Alisaie, catching the fact that he hadn’t actually let go of Ryne’s face yet, snorted gleefully.

“I don’t think it’s the straight thing,” Ryne decided.

“I told you it wouldn’t work!” The twins both yelled.


	2. The Rumour Come Out: Does Straight People Is Ghost?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As far as Ryne could tell, there were exactly 0 straight people to be found. But, if anyone was going to know more about obscure minutiae than Alphinaud, it was Master Matoya, or Y'shtola as she was apparently going by now that darkness had returned. So, obviously, there was nothing to do but ask.

Slitherbough had been one of Ryne’s favorite places even before everything that the Warrior of Darkness had done. But now, with the stars dancing through the branches after every breeze, it was especially magnificent.

Also, watching the sky gave her an excuse not to look Y’shtola directly in the eyes.

Y’sthola was agonizingly quiet, and following her lead much of the conversation around the communal fire had fallen away. The Warrior and Urianger seemed not especially concerned, of course, but they never were. 

“Alphinaud.” Y’shtola finally said. Ryne breathed a sigh of relief. She was not the immediate target. A stay of execution. 

“Yes?” Alphinaud replied. He was suddenly also possessed of a deep appreciation for the dancing tides of the sunless sea.

“Yes?” Alisaie replied. She was pleased as a cat corpse fattened by an especially gleeful voidsent. 

“How is it, precisely, that Ryne came to be both aware, and simultaneously unconvinced, of straight people?” The pain had left Y’shtola, replaced by a curious amusement. 

“Well. That is to say,” Alphinaud began.

“Oh, not you too!” Alisaie’s delight flipped to displeasure, and she slid closer to Ryne’s side. Alisaie was a grown woman, but there was no need to lie to Ryne like that. “Everyone knows straight people are a myth, Shtola!”

Ryne, having grown increasingly unsure about that, given Alphinaud’s general reliability when it came to matters of obscure cultural trivia that could potentially be of use diplomatically, attempted to nod in support of Alisaie. She mostly managed to tuck her chin into her chest. This strained her eyes as she kept them glued to the stars. Contrary to her best laid plans, the gentle ache did nothing to hold back the return of her furious blushing.  


Y’shtola leaned back into Runar’s chest again. The question had come as a surprise, but the responses put everything into a tidy context. Oh, to be young and naive. With a delicately crafted carelessness, she twisted to one side, and brought her legs up to rest on Ersabel's lap and rested her head against Runar's shoulder. She exuded confidence, which did little to soothe the younger members of her audience, but it was at least adorable to watch them squirm. No wonder every tia wanted to be a nunh, lording their sexual prowess over the next generation. Delightful. “I don’t know how the curriculum could possibly have changed so dramatically so quickly, but I am genuinely concerned about the state of the Studium." She was lying, of course, but Alphinaud bought into it enough to start sputtering. "Is this the best your tutors can offer their brightest students?”

“It’s about what I expected,” Thancred chimed in. All of the smug delight Alisaie had misplaced nestled behind his ribs. 

Sensing an opportunity to break the tension between the foreign born members of the Children of Darkness, Runar asked, “Is that what the people of your homeland are known as? Straights?”

As one, Y’shtola, Alisaie, Alphinaud, and Thancred choked at the implication. The Warrior laughed quietly, and Urianger persisted in paying the entire conversation no mind.

“Oh, you have my apologies!” Runar, ever empathetic, corrected. “I meant no insult, of course.”

“Thancred,” Alphinaud begged, at a loss for what to say though clearly something needed to be said, “you were straight for years, surely you can explain it?”

Having not entirely recovered from Runar’s well intended assumption, Thancred was unprepared for a lateral assault of that magnitude. “I was  _ what _ ?!”

Y’shtola threw her head back hard enough to jostle Runar’s broad body, cackling as only a Witch could. Her tail lashed with predatory glee as she stared Thancred down. “Oh yes, Thancred, please regale us all with the tales of your many years of straightness!”

Thancred sputtered helplessly for a long moment, eyes flipping between Y’shtola’s smirk and Alphinaud’s slowly dawning expression of horror. “I have never been  _ straight _ , Alphinaud, Thal’s  _ balls _ , who told you that?”

“Well, you and Minfilia were both-”

“Minfilia!” Y’shtola choked, though she couldn’t manage to finish her thought for the laughing.

“I already told you!” Alisaie said, “Minfilia wasn’t straight! Krile, remember? And, since Thancred wasn’t either, that proves it: straight people don’t exist!”

“You thought I was straight,  _ too _ ?!” Thancred’s continuing horror went unacknowledged.

The Warrior of Light stood up, then, gesturing for attention. “Actually,” ze signed, “I know a straight man. But he’s a Voeburtite, not from the Source.”

Behind zir, Urianger nodded sagely. His nod was significantly more sage than Ryne’s had so far managed to be, for all her unnatural advantages in that department.

“Oh dear,” Ryne said, knowing where this was about to go. The cacophony started up.

“He’s not re-”   
“Your imaginary friend-”   
“Voeburt was destroy-”   
“If that interloper still existed, I would be able-”   
“-and at this point, I think you-”   
“-it's all those sandwiches, malnutrition-”   
“There's no one there.”   


Patient as the wintery saints of the once Holy See that had become zir home, the Warrior waited for the fuss to die down.

Ze paced carefully through the firelight to stand before Alphinaud. “I’m sorry, Alphinaud” ze signed, though ze was in fact not even slightly sorry. Ze took great pride in zir next words. “But he’s a ghost. Straight people are ghosts.”

The color drained out of Alphinaud’s face entirely. Alisaie all but screamed in delight at this twist.

“Are ghosts real, then?” Ryne asked of Runar. 

He shrugged, clearly at a loss. “I believe they must belong to the warriors' homeland, along with the people of Straight.”   



	3. Urianger's Grammatical Choices Leave Much to be Desired, but That's What Fairies are For.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disappointed by whatever shoddy excuse for an education his master's children have been exposed to, and apparently spreading to poor Ryne, Urianger has called class into session. Possibly, this would have gone better without royal intervention. Probably not.

In light of the ludicrous oversight in Mistress Alisaie and Master Alphinaud’s tutelage revealed so recently in Slitherbough, Urianger had taken it upon himself to invite the youngest members of his family to the Bookman’s Shelves. With the judicious application of vigorously upset noises, the Pixies had been convinced to prank into existence an especially lovely tea service. 

Each of his errant pupils had a fine china teacup steaming in their hands, and a book of his 12-part encyclopedia on the social mores of the First’s races nestled on their laps. Although the names were different, and so too many of the customs surrounding family building, most of the relevant points remained unaltered by the sundering.

“As you have become concerned with matters both archaic and obscure,” Urianger intoned, aiming for and not quite achieving delicacy. “I believe the responsibility is mine to supplement your wayward education ‘neath the scholars of Sharlayan. Before approaching the more complex matters of love in both the physical and mental forms, allow me to disavow that most pernicious notion with which you have become enamoured as late.”

Ryne’s eyes had already been as wide as they could go at the notion that her perhaps somewhat more emotionally open father was going to broach this subject at all, rather than let her for flail hopelessly in ignorance as was generally the done thing. The mention of the ‘physical forms of love’ all but blotted out her ability to pay any attention to his words at all. 

Alphinaud hadn’t been listening in the first place, utterly humiliated by the idea that he had been assigned not only remedial studies, but remedial studies about the most basic imaginable biological functions. Functions with which he was perfectly well acquainted and had been for years, even before he’d spent weeks in a tent with only his deep anxieties and Estinien. 

Alisaie hung on every word with rapt attention. The combination of getting to hear Urianger talk about sex and tell her that she was right was especially promising.

“Those peoples whom thou wouldst ken as ‘straight’ are most assuredly real. It has been many generations since their numbers and influence were sufficient to be of note, even here among the peoples of the First, much less scarred by constant calamity though they be. Nevertheless, they exist in small capacities.”

“Hah!” Alphinaud crowed. His tea made a valiant attempt to slock all over this assigned reading, but fortunately failed. Beside him, Alisaie wilted with a noise somewhere between a groan and a gurgle.

“Oh! Fascinating! So they really are ghosts, then?” Ryne asked. Her suffocating anxiety started to loosen.

“I am afraid, Lady Ryne, that while straight people, or as they are more aptly described, people of heterosexual inclination, are quite real, the specters of the dearly dead do not take any form perceptible by the as-yet mortal. Any such visitations are the result of other aetheric forces and manifestations, not unlike the Warrior of Darkness’s echo or your own oracular gifts.”

Ryne frowned and huffed quietly. That was a disappointment indeed. Not that she had really believed in them, but the possibility had been promising given the siren song of sleeping Light in the emptiness beyond the Wall. If the Light could survive its eradication at the hands of the Warrior of Darkness, then perhaps the people lost all those generations ago… But, it was not to be.

Alphinaud’s self satisfaction disappeared as quickly as it had come, and he mirrored his twin’s posture. “I’ve  _ seen them,  _ Urianger! Ysayle and Haurchefant–oh never mind.”

“Nobody wins this time,” Alisaie sighed, and took an especially sullen sip of her tea.

“Nonetheless,” Urianger persisted, “for all that people of heterosexual inclination are quite rare, they do live on. They are but a variation on the theme of personhood, much similar to the variation of height or hair. And, of course, during the generations of their prominence, many understandings of anatomical importance were reached. Many of the scholars of the fallen empire of Allag were heterosexually inclined, and rendered unto us the eldest discussions of birth and life-making, which in turn inspired the creation of the many clones populating the Crystal Tower, and by the reckoning of some less widely read and accepted scholars, manipulated the Lalafellin race’s current physiology.” 

Alisaie dropped her teacup unceremoniously on the small table beside her, leaning in as if to better understand Urianger’s words. He continued unabated. “Of course, given the existence of Dwarves upon the First, we can more realistically conclude–“

Alisaie clapped once, loud enough to startle splashes of hot tea out of her fellow students. Fortunately not on the encyclopedias, though Alphinaud’s sharp inhale suggested that it had spilled somewhere especially painful. “Is it true that Lalafell—Dwarves, sorry—don’t actually have genders, they just pretend to so that everyone else will respect them more?”

“That is a patently absurd idea and, in conjunction with the blatant misinformation regarding heterosexuality to which thou hast been exposed, I believe I must pen a missive addressing the head of curricula at the Studium and have our wayward friend deliver it when next ze is returning to the Source. Of course-”

“Of course,” came an ebouillante trill from many and no directions, “if you have need of faster passage, I would offer to spare my precious sapling unnecessary labours.”

Where the other three mortals startled, Urianger merely inclined his head deeply. “Thine offer is well appreciated, your majesty, but if it should please thee, we wouldst prefer not to strain thy patience with our stern and boresome businesses.”

The Titania in Red laughed the kindest of its laughs intended for those not bound into its service. The brittle threat that it presented was only just palpable.

“Then, wouldst thou not prefer,” it imitated, mockery playful for the moment, “to invite thy liege-lord into thine home, whenst thou wouldst appraise the nature of its people and lo, of itself as well?”

“We bear no allegiance to thee, Your Majesty. We bear allegiance only to that one to whom thou hast sworn an oath.” Urianger replied, smooth and certain.

“Are we going to die?” Ryne whispered to Alphinaud’s right ear. 

“We’re going to die.” Alisaie whispered to his left ear.

“Oh, of course you are! That is your way!” Titania responded. “But not before we’ve had our fun!”

With a breeze that chimed in the mortals’ jaws like biting glass, Titania manifested the fragment of itself more commonly reserved for playing with its favoured sapling. But, if The Warrior were the sapling, and Titania the branches, then these silly creatures would be sprouts tangled in the roots binding its sapling to mortal soils. Connected to Titania itself, however distantly. And besides that, the humiliation oozing up their throats promised delight!

“Is it true, then,” Feo Ul asked, bobbing just to the side of Urianger’s head, “that most mortals are too stupid to understand gender?”

“Ey!” Alisaie sat up straighter than she had throughout the entire lecture. “I’m not stupid, it’s a legitimate inter-cultural concern!”

Far too late, Alphinaud echoed his sisters’ sentiments, muttering quietly that they were going to die.

“It is a pernicious and cruel rumour, dating back to the fracturing of Belah’dia, in an attempt to delegitimize the authority of the sul-”

“Very stupid,” Feo Ul declared. “No one has made even the slightest effort to relieve  _ my  _ throne over such things. If the crown and its gender were that important to the kin of mortal royalty, then surely they would have simply rendered the tiresome ones into lovely shrubs and made done with it.”

“I don’t think we can make people into shrubs, Your Majesty,” Ryne offered. If any of the casters in her acquaintance could do such a thing, she was certain it would have come up before now.

“Oh no, sweet rhizome, you’re just doing it again. I am not Majesty, I am Highness. Majesty is the whole of me, not the me of me!” Feo Ul corrected, teeth bared in an approximation of a comforting mortal smile. It was not a particularly accurate approximation. All these mortals, so fettered by their inherent infancy. “You and your mayfly engendering!”

Alphinaud’s brow furrowed as he struggled to connect the correction of title to any discussion of creation or of gender that had now gone to madness. He opened his mouth to ask, only to be elbowed so hard by Alisaie that he hiccoughed instead.

“Yes, yes,” Alisaie said, half to cover her brother’s sudden and inexplicable breathing problems, and half to resolve the problem he had been about to create. “And the Warrior of Darkness is only the Warrior of Light upon the Source and in the void.”

“Oh, not completely simple, then!” Feo Ul crooned, chiming as it spun a circle around Alisaie’s head. She resisted the urge to bat it down like a wayward moth.

“Yes,” Urianger agreed, “a most apt equivalence indeed, Mistress Alisaie. But, then, if you know of the complexities of the Warrior’s own entitling, what could ever have possessed you to present so frightful an inquiry regarding the rest of zir race?”

“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? The Warrior’s ‘entitling’ isn’t anything like mine, or yours, or Ryne’s, or anyone’s! So, maybe it’s something about being a Lalafell?”

“If that were to be the case, then surely the good lady Tataru Taru and our departed Archon Papalymo would, likewise, have borne such titles?”

Ryne blinked furiously at the conversation which had completely passed her by at this point. “Wait, if Feo Ul isn’t… and the Warrior of Darkness is…”

She huffed loudly, arms crossed as her frustration mounted. “Well, how is anyone supposed to be an, a, a straight heterosexual inclination with all of this happening too!”

“Precisely, rhizome! Well played!” Feo Ul sang, accompanied by a pleased backflip.

“As thou canst see,” Urianger nodded, “the decline of such people of a heterosexual inclination is itself a consequence of the complexity of inter- and indeed intrapersonal natures.”

This had all become entirely too much. When Ryne firmly planted her eyes upward, it was not to seek the solace of the midnight sky. Just to avoid boring, unpoetic tears. Everything had gone completely opaque. “Well, then what are straight people? And what am I?!”

“Oh, rhizome,” Feo Ul sighed, perhaps touched by the depth of emotion the tiniest of the mortals had summoned up. She was so very small, only a fistful of seasons, and though neither Feo Ul nor the whole of Titania, nor perhaps any of the fey, could understand her discomfort, it was nonetheless real. 

“Ryne,” Urianger stood, pushing past Feo Ul with a shocking lack of concern for the rites and respects of Royalty. He knelt before the girl, and with the gentlest touch on her shoulder coaxed her to meet his gaze. “There is nothing in thee that seeks to harm any creature, even thineself. Wouldst thou wish it, we shall endeavour to seek that answer together; should we fail to find a sketch of your soul in the arts of the past, then we shall draft one together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all know fishing is kind of broken in FF14, but did you know that fishing is also narratively fucky?
> 
> https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Aetherochemical_Compound_123  
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Aetherochemical_Compound_666
> 
> This kind of shit, combined with the fact that you fish up fat cat minions from the ocean, is why I'm pretty sure they're the bloated corpses of drowned kittens.


	4. They Call It the Empty Because it Longs to be Filled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe, Ryne concludes after a long and perilous journey through her emotions and also some serious drag out fights. Maybe there are other ways to want someone in your life, and in your soul.

The Empty made Ryne feel sick. There were plenty of reasons that aetherologists and researchers had explained in extreme and gruesome detail. But the reasons didn’t matter so much as the way the blinding desert—not even a desert, much worse than a desert—leached all the life out of her blood just as it leached the color out of the world.

Aching for a chance to put aside the looming, unanswered questions of the past weeks, Ryne focused on that enervated feeling. If her bones could be nauseous, it would feel like this.

Beside her, the Warrior of Darkness stared blankly at the vast and agonizingly identical dunes of the Empty.

“Where I am from,” ze signed, not looking towards Ryne. It wouldn’t matter anyway. The wind of the shuttle was too strong to speak over. Apparently, not looking was extremely rude on the Source. Though, it wasn’t as if the Warrior were especially polite at the best of times. “Where I am from, we call this place The Burn.”

Ryne startled at that. At the idea that so great a horror as this had befallen the Warrior’s home. She had known, in a way. Been told for years of the many calamities. But it was different, to see the destruction of the Empty, and see the slumped posture of the Warrior of Darkness. To see the recognition. 

She would fix it. Ryne would fix the Empty. And then the Warrior would go back home, and fix the Burn, too. Things would be better.

The ride to the camp outside of the first sin-eater was long and silent, save for the whipping wind.

She named it Eden. A paradise to plant her hopes.

There was a girl whose voice tore through her own bond with Eden, tore into the space behind her eyes in a way that Titania’s oppressive magics could never match. The look on the Warrior’s face as ze studied Ryne’s reaction was inscrutable.

Then again, Ryne had not lived through this feeling before. This moment of staggering shock, the recognition of someone fundamental and somehow faraway. The Warrior had. Zir smile was tempered with too many shades of mourning. 

Later, Urianger and Thancred would decide not to tell Ryne just what that voidsent girl was. In the moment of realization, the Warrior had already made zir decision, too. Nothing good had come of being told. Nothing good had come of knowing what ze and Ardbert had once been. So, the Warrior let her stare, and said nothing about the enchanted look on her face. 

Ryne wasn’t an idiot. She knew this girl was a threat. Yet her voice, and the shocking greed it inspired, were impossible for her to ignore. Even during the fight.

Especially after it.

It didn’t seem much like what Alisaie had tried to explain, about kissing and sex. No aching heart, or sensitized skin. No overwhelming heat. Nothing that matched what Ryne had heard about desire. But oh.

_ Oh. _

Without a doubt, Ryne desired.

And that was certainly something.


	5. Epilogue: Meanwhile, on the Source

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth about the mystical heterosexual is finally revealed. Pity that none of the kids will ever hear about it.

_****Meanwhile, on the Source..._

“I have heard a term several times now, Baelsar, and I would have you explain it, for it is used in a way I cannot understand. Tell me, what is ‘straight’ among the Garleans?”

The Shadowhunter snorted at Estinien’s utter ignorance. Truly, even the better among the Eorzeans were barbarians. “The title given to people who naturally seek to further the growth and stability of the Empire's population, of course. People with a particular passion for the sexual creation of children.”

“Ah. So it’s propaganda.”


End file.
